It started out as a Question Too Esoteric For Only Connect by Des Elmes.
It has evolved INTO A MONSTER. And still Only Connect question editor David Bodycombe can’t solve it. Yeah, taste of your own medicine, David.
So if you’re playing along at home and you still haven’t solved it, in which case DUH, here is a complete list of the clues given:
- Knight
- Aerial
- Oscilloscope
- Scottish Flag
- An upward pointing arrow
- A compass rose
- Some tortoises mating
- A triple-coloured river
- A thistle
- St Paul’s Cathedral
- A ship pointing westward
- A chevron
- Four letters in 2×2 arrangement
- A slightly colourful, slightly gibbous moon
- A 3d parallelogram turned slightly to the side with two lines running through it horizontally, conjoining in the middle.
- A spinning star
- A sort of Venn diagram in black and white
- A cake
- A lot of triangles on a flag
- Hexagons and a leopard’s head.
There can’t be many more, but if you’ve worked out the connection and can think of any other ones, feel free to add them.
Unless he’s been secretly taking the piss all afternoon.
For a minute, I was convinced it was a trick “ha ha, these are actually all unrelated” question, but no. Took me a minute or two, but it was the very first clue – the knight – that made me finally twig it. Top question.
*already fairly pink with pride*
Thanks for calling it a top question Tom.
I wonder what VC would have to say if she saw this…
Does “B-lister pretending to enjoy themselves” lie outside of the subset?
I think technically it’s out, but there’s chalk dust there. “The shape of an open book, viewed from the side” is definitely in though.
Yes, I agree with Tom that it would muddy the waters a bit, but I see what you’re going for.
See, I know what the connection is, or at least nobody has yet said that my additions to the list aren’t actually right, but I’m not sure what you’re referring to with these and am, strangely, kind of looking forward to finding out what you’re talking about when people catch on.
I assume the shape of an open book, viewed from the side, is the same as the chevron. Nobody mentioned the stripy shell or the half-moon-half-sun face, did they?
You’re right. Couldn’t work out which the chevron was. In David B’s defence, I suspect some the clues were somewhat imprecise by OC’s standards!
The half-moon half-sun would have been a giveaway. It’s also just given me a flashback to Bill Nighy’s finest hour. Well, Bill Nighy paying the bills at any rate: http://bit.ly/bsKq2T
Describe ‘3D parallelogram’. A parallolopiped, or just a cuboid skewed across one axis?
I must confess I haven’t got it properly, but I reckon I’m in the right ballpark.
Wait a minute, of course I’m bloody not.
I think you’re bordering on the ridiculous, there.
A dragon. (POINTLESS ANSWER!)
Le Carte aur tresors? (sorry if wrong spelt?)
A stylised watercolour version of a sun rising above the horizon.
We’re not far from exhausting the list, certainly we’re down to the obscure ones by now. If you still don’t get it by now, David, this might be the time to sound the emergency Bloing! to make this a sound question and start giving clues like
Bwoooooooing bwooooooooing bong bidddddle beeee-dummmmm.
>start giving clues like Bwoooooooing bwooooooooing bong bidddddle beeee-dummmmm.
F**k no. Although it would bring 15 years of gameshow fandom full circle.
Fifteen years of game show fandom! Blimey, that’s about right, and a scarily long period of time.
And to think that we first knew Brig, back in the day, as a precocious, opinionated and imaginitive nine-year-old. He still looks good for 24, come to think of it.
Especially as I’m 28.
Ok, Ok, I got it after staring at St Paul’s Cathedral for three minutes then imagining it in my head and then the penny dropped. Very good.
Although, if I may, I would gripe about the fairness of some of these clues – particularly, the first one should be “Model of a knight on horseback”.
Thank fuck for that.
Would it be polite to actually give the answer away now for the benefit of Bar participants who haven’t got it? Certainly anyone who hasn’t grown up with the relevant TV channel in question, for instance as a result of living (or having lived) outside the UK, need feel no shame whatsoever for not getting the references.
Yes, go ahead.
Presentation graphics (“idents”) for TV channels that are/were members of the ITV network. See, for instance, here. Some of the descriptions, or the described images, are pretty obscure; for instance, I’m still puzzled about “B-lister pretending to enjoy themselves”…
Perhaps it’s Test Card Girl? At the very least, that might also explain Tom Scott’s “chalk dust” comment.
(And for full disclosure, I had no clue what the connection was. I nearly submitted “Things discussed in a thread at Bother’s Bar” as a meta-answer, but decided against it.)
I think the “B-lister pretending to enjoy themselves” might be something to do with the first set of idents used by ITV1 after the ditching of all the regional identities in England and Wales in October 2002.
Oh! Turns out I did know the answer (in that this was my first guess), although I thought I was wrong.
OH MY GOD, I’VE JUST GOT IT!
I feel so pleased with myself.